Beloved, I am glad to share with you today the above theme from Pr 8:1-2 and following. Indeed, as in Pr 1:20-23, Wisdom turns to the lost and resounds its calls for grace. This time it is stationed on the heights, on the paths, at the gates of the city, wherever the world passes. The intersection (v. 2) is a place on the road where the opportunity arises to change direction. This is where, in the parable, the king’s servants are sent to seek and invite as many people as they find (Matthew 22:1-14). Chapter 9 will show us that Wisdom also has its feast prepared and sends its servants to confirm its invitation. You who may still be walking on the wide path, now respond to the insistent voice that calls you to the crossroads. This voice is that of Jesus, who wants your happiness. He makes those who listen to Him hear excellent things, straight, clear, true words (verses 6, 9). He has in reserve treasures that have nothing comparable to the gold and silver of this world. He inherits “durable property”, “real property” (v. 21), “future property”… “better and permanent,” as Hebrews 10:1-39 also calls them. How glorious is in truth, “what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:6-16; v. 17-21).
“What God has prepared for those who love Him” has its source in Christ. He is “the wisdom of God in mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God had preordained before the ages for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:6-16; see also 1 Corinthians 1:26-31). Verses 22 to 31 take us back in time beyond the beginning of created things, as far as our thinking can go. Already Wisdom was there, a Person next to God: the Son with the Father, in a reciprocal fullness of love and joy, to conceive and then carry out together the work of creation. But moreover we learn here something extraordinary: Before there existed a single man, before there was only one land to carry him, even before “the beginning of the dust of the world”, you and I were known and loved. “My joy was in the sons of men,” is the wonderful statement of God’s Beloved before time began. He did not want to enjoy his Father’s love alone. And all the work He was going to undertake had this great final purpose: To introduce saved and perfect men into His own happiness, to the glory of God His Father. These verses form the first part of chapter 8. Comparing it with the Preface to Proverbs (1:1-7), we find that everything given to us in this preface as the content of the book is shown to us in chapter 8 as the fruit of a person’s teaching, of Wisdom itself.
In chapter 7, the foreign woman whispers in the night; here, Wisdom cries out in broad daylight, in the open public and speaks to all. The world is the field where these two women carry out their activity. One delights in the darkness that blinds men, the other seeks by all means to open their eyes to the light. Which side will be the victory? This whole book warns against the corrupt woman and produces in public wisdom to make her triumph. We have said that here Wisdom is a person; but this person is Christ. He is worthy of receiving every honor, but he himself gives prudence to the simple, meaning to fools; all his words are justice, clarity for intelligence, righteousness, instruction, knowledge; he gives reign and strength and all true goods to those who love him.
Let us repeat this passage in detail: Wisdom applies divine light to good and evil, and to all that we have to form a judgment on. She discovers everything. It is intelligence; it alone has the ability to understand God’s thoughts and to appropriate them, but also to communicate them to others. Whoever listens to his voice is connected to God himself, in this world of darkness. She could have let the world go its train to the final judgment, but no: she does not give herself rest, she works constantly, because she is grace.
Then it is thedescription of the place where Wisdom meets man, the fallen man who organized his existence without God, who created an activity where everything is lacking, because Christ, Wisdom, lacks it. Wisdom is alone vis-à-vis the world. She goes looking for the man wherever she thinks she will find him. She shows herself in public, so that everyone can see her. It stands on the heights, descends into the cities, accosts passers-by, travelers, men gathered in community; it stands at the gates where they deal with their affairs and deliver justice. “To you men,” she shouts, and her voice speaks “to the sons of men.” None is excepted. It will address itself quite differently to the sons, to those who belong to it. Here we see the grace that “wants all men to be saved.” Then She did not come to seek the truth in the wise, for she herself is the truth, but she came to bring it to the unintelligent, the ignorant, the foolish. V. 6-11 tells us what the words of Wisdom are. She says excellent things and straight things, everything that has to do with the truth, and she abhors evil. The words of Wisdom make us find a way according to God in the midst of a perverse and tortuous world; they are fair, clear and straight; so the intelligent people who received them feel that they are priceless; they possess a good that surpasses all the riches that the world could offer.
Then Wisdom describes itself, as only divine perfection has the right to do. Wisdom remains with caution. She has the subtle discernment, that of the serpent (Matt. 10:16), by which all traps are recognized, to avoid them. The Lord showed this prudence in the story of Caesar’s tribute or when he answered the Pharisees: Was John’s baptism of God or of men? Wisdom “finds the knowledge that comes from reflection.” This knowledge probes the difficulties, having weighed them carefully to face them. This is how the Lord raised his face to go up to Jerusalem, or he embarked his disciples on the rough sea. “The fear of Jehovah is to hate evil,” and has this fear not been realized throughout the Savior’s life? So he can say here: “I hate pride and height, and the way of iniquity, and the perverse mouth.” “I am gentle and humble of heart,” he said. He made straight marks at his feet; He was the absolute expression of what He was saying. “To me the advice and the know-how; I am intelligence; to me the force” (v. 14). All that is good for the conduct of life, for overcoming difficulties, for avoiding pitfalls, do we not find it in Him? He is the inexhaustible source of all good and shows himself to be such on every occasion.
Finally, in vs. 15-16, it is He who is the head of God’s government on earth; He who uses kings, chiefs, nobles, judges, to conduct things as his wisdom sees fit, and to bring his instruments to accomplish His own purposes, often against their will. Theywho love Wisdom for its own sake, those who seek it, are loved by it and find it. “If anyone loves me,” says the Lord, “he will keep my word, and my Father will love him; and we will come to Him, and we will make our home in His house. He who does not love me does not keep my words” (John 14:23-24). Wisdom is never found outside the paths of righteousness and “just judgment”: from the right appreciation of things that characterized the way of Christ man here on earth.
Here ends the first part of this chapter. More and more is emerging here the person of Christ, of the One who has been made wisdom to us on behalf of God (1 Cor 1. 30). We have just seen Wisdom personified, visiting this world and the men in it, calling them from within the crowd to come to it, and learning from it who alone can give them abundantly all that they lack. Now we are transported to eternity to see that Wisdom existed there in person in God’s Counsel. “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way, before his works of antiquity.” The complete thought of God in Christ existed from eternity, before the first beginning of the origins of creation was established, even before there was a beginning. It was born, brought to light, ready for action, before the origins of the earth. When the time came, when God had not yet made “the beginning of the dust of the world,” that is, had not brought out of nothingness the first elements of Creation, Wisdom came into action. It was there, before the first manifestation of creative power. We have to find the path of Wisdom in ruined creation, but God’s counsel was before creation, before ruin, before the path to cross it.
The following verses have been compiled for your edification and grouped together for your better understanding.
New Call of Wisdom:
- The Cry of Wisdom
Pr 1.20 Wisdom cries out in the streets, Raises Its Voice in squares: Pr 8.1 Doesn’t wisdom cry out? Doesn’t intelligence raise its voice? Pr 9.3 She sent her servants, she shouts on the top of the heights of the city. Ez 33:11 I have delivered him into the hands of the hero of the nations, Who will treat him according to his wickedness; I have cast him out.
- Mouth of the righteous
Ps 37:30 The mouth of the righteous announces wisdom, and his tongue proclaims righteousness. Pr 10:11 The mouth of the righteous is a source of life, but violence covers the mouths of the wicked. Rom 15:6 that all together, with one mouth, you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Pet 2:22 He who has not committed sin, and in whose mouth there has been no fraud;
- Wisdom of God
Jb 12:13 In God reside wisdom and power. Advice and intelligence belong to him. Ps 104:24 How many of your works are, O Lord! You did them all wisely. The earth is filled with your possessions. Rom 11:33 O depth of God’s wealth, wisdom, and science! How unfathomable his judgments are, and his ways incomprehensible! For 1 Cor 1:25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than men, and God’s weakness is stronger than men.
- Punishment of sin, physical or spiritual death
Gen 3:19 It is by the sweat of your face that you will eat bread, until you return to the earth, from where you were taken; for you are dust, and you will return to the dust. Pr 11:19 Thus justice leads to life, but he who pursues evil finds death. Rom 5:12 Therefore, as through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus death spread over all men, because all have sinned,… Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but God’s free gift is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
From all of the above, we note that creation was the fruit of Wisdom; the earth is the sphere of its unfolding, but Wisdom itself is above all that. She was a divine person with God, but she was God; distinct from Him, but absolutely of the same nature; “next to Him, his infant”, a figure who expresses the character of this intimacy, and the delights of God in his person; she herself, always in joy before Him, so that these delights were mutual. From this divine agreement came creation, but it was in creation man, whom God, whom Christ had in sight. “His delights were in the sons of men.” The delights fully attained their purpose and result by virtue of the work of Christ who, becoming man to accomplish the Redemption, gave the sons of men his own place, as man, in glory. All this work is omitted here, to be fully developed in the New Testament; for the subject of this chapter is the exaltation of Wisdom in a person who, in view of the fulfillment of God’s eternal purposes, found his delights in the sons of men, and (how can he better express his own delights!) became man, became as man the delights of God (“This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my pleasure”), and, in his own person, could extend the divine delights upon all the redeemed! “Now then, son, listen to me,” said Wisdom, that blessed person. She speaks to sons, as in v. 6 she addressed men. Listen to me, for I am the grace that finds its delights in the enjoyment of his work. “Blessed is the man who listens to me,” she said, “for he who found me has found life” and the favor of the Lord rests on him! Alas! how many men do not listen to her, do not love her, refuse her gifts, hate her! Their path is the path of death! Our prayers are with you all.
PRAYER OF ACCEPTANCE OF JESUS CHRIST AS LORD AND PERSONAL SAVIOR
I now invite every person who wants to become a new creation by walking in the truth, to pray with me the following prayer:
Lord Jesus, I have long walked in the lusts of the world ignoring your love for humans. I admit to having sinned against you and ask your forgiveness for all my sins, because today I have decided to give you my life by taking you as Lord and personal Savior. I recognize that you died on the cross of Calvary and rose from the dead for me.
I am now saved and born again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lead me every day to the eternal life that you give to all who obey your Word. Reveal yourself to me and strengthen my heart and faith, so that your light may shine in my life right now.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for accepting me into your divine family, so that I may also contemplate the wonders of your kingdom.
I will now choose a nearby waterpoint to baptize myself by immersion, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
All adoration, power and glory are yours, now and forever and ever. Amen!
I would be happy to react to any questions and comments you may have, before sharing with you tomorrow “the invitation of wisdom; the mocking and the wise; the invitation of the crazy woman (Pr 9).
May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you abundantly.
David Feze, Servant of the Almighty God.